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All posts for the month April, 2007

Preparing to ride my motorcycle (once the title arrives), I bought a bottle of neatsfoot oil to recondition my leather jacket, which I’ve owned since 1979. It worked quite well, but I was curious about the exotic */Neat/* creature that exudes this useful oil from its feet. It seems that NEAT was once a word for the bovine: a cow. No doubt they stopped calling them */neats /*when someone tried to housebreak one as an indoor pet.

One of the flaws of capitalism is that, since it is based on greed, manufacturers prefer to sell us a whole new product rather than supplying reasonably priced replacement parts. If parts are available at all, they are priced much higher than their actual value. Evaporative coolers, for example, can last for years, but the metal pad-holders, subjected to constant water-flow, rust out. _Replacements are not available!_ Even the big hardware stores don’t have them. As a result, I had to build my own replacement pad-holder yesterday. Time will tell if it works as well as the original. In a capitalist economy, sometimes the greed motivation works to the benefit of most, but it results in annoying _*gaps*_* *for the consumer. It is inherently inefficient, and creates _planned obsolescence_ in its products. Why don’t they use rustproof plastic or aluminum for pad-holders? Right.

Recently I heard of a new sport, apparently popular in Missouri and Oklahoma, called *_noodling_*. No, not competitive pasta-making. It’s a form of catfishing. Instead of hooks and bait, you dive in the water and look for large catfish hiding in old beaver-holes, and stick your hand in the fish’s mouth. Assuming the fish is not large enough to bite off your whole hand, or fast enough to bite off a finger, you’ve got your fish dinner. Great idea. Caution: [1] Sometimes the catfish’s mate may attack you from behind. [2] Sometimes beaver holes are occupied by beavers, which are not amenable to the hand-in-mouth capture technique.

*__*

— ~~~Captain RatIt’s a friendly universe…Let’s make it a peaceful world.~~~~~~~~~~~~My website:Cosmic Cabdrivers’ Guide to the UniverseHTTP://WWW.COSMICRAT.COM360 Blog: http://360.yahoo.com/captainrat23MSN Blog: http://cosmicrat.spaces.live.com/~~~~~~~~~~~~Thought for the day:The number of feet in a yard is directly proportional to the successof the barbecue.

Well, maybe it is. Astronomers have discovered a planet that might have water, a reasonable climate, and a nice red sun. It’s only about 20 light years away. That will be very useful when we build some faster spaceships, especially if we ruin the planet we’re on. It’s got a bit more gravity, but we’d get used to that– just build stronger muscles. Hope the natives are friendly.

I like two night stands. One on each side of the bed.

— ~~~Captain RatIt’s a friendly universe…Let’s make it a peaceful world.~~~~~~~~~~~~My website:Cosmic Cabdrivers’ Guide to the UniverseHTTP://WWW.COSMICRAT.COM360 Blog: http://360.yahoo.com/captainrat23MSN Blog: http://cosmicrat.spaces.live.com/~~~~~~~~~~~~Thought for the day:And this is good old Boston,The home of the bean and the cod,Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,And the Cabots talk only to God.

Kurt Vonnegut has died. He was 84.He was a great American writer, with a unique ability to use humor to make the reader take a fresh look at human tragedies and the the oddness of our own behavior. He wrote 19 novels, including Slaughterhouse Five, about the WW2 bombing of Dresden, Germany, which he experienced firsthand as a prisoner of war.

Kurt will live on in the minds of his readers. I highly recommend that you be one of them.

It seems I missed seeing comments posted; msn doesn’t send me comment alerts like yahoo 360 does, and when I use the handy email blog-posting method, I don’t look at my own space. It’s like not using a mirror because I remember what I looked like last time.

I shall try to be more observant in the future. After all, I like comments.

Yes, the GPS shoes were really reported– I didn’t make that up. The primary purpose was to prevent losing children, or so they said. I don’t know if they’re available at your local shoe store yet. When they are, no doubt some mischievous children will swap shoes with one another just to see what will happen.

Perhaps the British Navy will consider providing such shoes to their sailors now. The interesting thing about the Iran incident was that there is no agreed-on boundary line, so the precise location of the boat is irrelevant. Either side could claim they were right. The point is, however, that the 15 were not on a pleasure cruise; they were probably up to something.* * *My cable internet provider, Cox, did finally agree to remove the unfair charge, and, they say, will look into the security vulnerabilities I pointed out. That is a good thing.* * * *Happy birthday to the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club. They are 50 years old.* * * * *Stay tuned for further random emissions from my collection of neurons.